


Stark & Romanov

by AutumnWoodsDreamer



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Headcanon, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Not Canon Compliant, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26140321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnWoodsDreamer/pseuds/AutumnWoodsDreamer
Summary: Just some more headcanons...
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 96





	1. Interim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s some more Avengers headcanons, this time the ones focussed more on Tony and Natasha (because they’re my favourites—in case you didn’t already know).
> 
> Enjoy!

There’s a year between the events of the Stark Expo and the Battle of New York. In that time, Tony and Natasha actually crossed paths quite often.

It was Tony’s mission right from the beginning to destroy his weapons and break up the Ten Rings—his “loyal customers.” Those six months after he announced to the world he’s the Iron Man but before the Expo opened, he doggedly tracked down and reduced to ashes every last gun, bomb, and missile from every last shipment Obadiah had signed off on. By the time they launched the fireworks to commence the Stark Expo, there wasn’t a genuine Stark weapon left on the planet... but there were thousands of knock-offs.

While he focussed on ridding the world of every weapon he had patented, SHIELD worked to stop the smugglers, the bootleggers, and the former Ten Rings operatives that splintered off and formed new, harder to trace groups. Tony’s self-appointed mission made a lot of work for them, but that was not necessarily a bad thing; before, when the terrorists could just buy weapons straight from SI through Stane, they were, ironically, impossible to detect. Now, because they have to source weapons from more questionable sources, they’re vulnerable and easier to pin down.

Before SHIELD began to suspect something might be wrong with Tony’s health, Fury had Natasha very busy following the trail of bootleg Stark tech, some of which was just as good (read: deadly) as the genuine product. After the Expo fiasco (and once “Fury’s Big Week” wrapped up), she went right back to stopping the smugglers.

The Expo was supposed to run for a year, but it was scrapped after the Hammer Drones’ attack. Just as well: the whole incident had opened Tony’s eyes to problems bigger than his own weapons. He learned of the bootleg market not long after and dismantling that became his next mission.

He often wound up on the same trail as Natasha. Whenever she got somewhere before him, he’d hack into her comms and blast classic rock music (like the scene in Avengers)—it became his way of announcing his presence.

The first few instances, they didn’t talk much, they just carried on with business. Then they started slipping into banter and soon found a comfortable rhythm that way. Though it was never official, for the purpose of those missions, they were practically partners.

Tony always suggested they go for burgers or something when they were done; Natasha didn’t realize he was serious until the one time he actually _did_ go get burgers for them while she finished up.

It quickly became a sort of tradition: Track down bad guys, disrupt shipments and deals, destroy the bootleg goods, then go get takeout while still fully decked out in armour and SHIELD gear. (There are, indeed, plenty of photos taken by civilians but they never reached the media because nobody ever believed the pictures of Iron Man seated in a corner booth at a McDonald’s in the middle of Albuquerque, sipping a large chocolate shake and laughing with a mysterious redhead who maintained perfect eye contact while stealing his fries could be real...)


	2. No Trust Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Okay, gonna post a bonus one because some of them are pretty short...)

When people heard the story of how they met, they had a tendency to assume Tony harboured some degree of resentment toward Natasha.

The simple truth was: he didn’t.

And then they supposed the matter was just water under the bridge, that he had forgiven her, they had moved on, and here—years down the line—they had built up an understanding and a level of trust.

That wasn’t quite the case, either.

There had been no apology and no forgiveness because there had been no betrayal and no injured trust.

Tony failed to see why everyone felt Natasha had to apologize for her deception as Natalie; if spies have to apologize for deceiving people, then plumbers have to apologize for dismantling your pipes in order to fix the faucets and doctors have to apologize for prescribing medicine to get you healthy again.

It wasn’t out of maliciousness that she crafted the cover of Natalie and sidled up to him; it was what the mission called for.

So, no, Tony never forgave Natasha because she hadn’t betrayed him.

In fact, he felt he had to thank her. After all, she played a key role in saving his life.

The only problem was getting Natasha to understand that he (a man with exhaustive trust issues) really did trust her (the “triple imposter”).

Well, maybe someday...


	3. Donuts

Donuts are a significant part of Tony and Natasha’s secret code.

After the Expo, after the meeting with Fury, Tony returns to his bruised and battered home and finds a gift-wrapped box sitting on a conspicuously neat pile of rubble and surrounded by curious seagulls. Inside the box are a half-dozen assorted donuts, still warm.

(Initially, he assumes it’s from Pepper but she never gets him food unless he outright asks and the “Get Well Soon” scrawled on the inside of the lid isn’t her sharp and tidy script. Jarvis tells him it is, in fact, a gift from Natasha and no, they aren’t poisoned.)

Six months later, he sends her a half-dozen consisting of the exact same assortment after she successfully busts a black market deal of Stark weapons that he had been struggling to catch.

After the Battle of New York, after shawarma, as the ragtag team makes their way through the streets cluttered with dust and debris, Natasha ducks into a still-standing bakery and manages to snag two dozen cinnamon donuts that the owner thought she’d just have to throw away. (Much like Tony would, Natasha pays triple on purpose). The others are downright perplexed when she and Tony share a knowing smile.

And... it sticks.

Whenever Natasha’s on her way back from a long, difficult mission, she sends a half-dozen box of classic donuts ahead to Tony to let him know she’s fine. Absolute relief washes over him when he sees the courier carrying a bright pink box up to the reception desk.

After he’s had another too-close-for-comfort brush with death, he gets her a double chocolate donut as an apology.

When one of them is having a bad day, the other shows up with donuts.

When Tony’s been working too long in the workshop without a break, Natasha brings donuts and coffee.

Donuts mean “I’m sorry.”

Donuts mean “I miss you.”

Donuts mean “It’s alright.”

~~Donuts mean “I love you.”~~

The team learns about it but they don’t mention it or try to take part in it (though Clint will stop at nothing to get his hands on baked goods, he’s careful not to cross the line when it comes to the donut story. Tony and Natasha often take pity on him and share their donuts anyway.)


	4. Inside Jokes

Everyone expected Clint and Natasha or Tony and Bruce to have a bunch of inside jokes, but, no: it turned out to be Tony and Natasha.

Clint and Natasha are close so they do have some private jokes, but they’re actually quite tame: typically, one leans over to the other and says, out of the corner of their mouth, “Just like (insert foreign city here) all over again.” and the other sniggers or rolls their eyes or snarls (depending on whatever mission or mishap the other is referencing...)

Everyone always assumes Tony and Bruce have inside jokes, and sometimes Tony thinks they do, but Bruce is innocently oblivious and forgets to catch the reference, unintentionally leaving his science buddy hanging.

But Tony and Natasha are _those_ friends who have approximately a billion exclusive jokes, references, and convoluted gags only the two of them understand.

Some of them trace back to when Natasha went undercover as Natalie (the entire incident is an inside joke because the others—even Clint—don’t know about it for the longest time), but they seem to invent new jokes almost every week.

Donuts are, of course, their most notable private joke; the others sometimes wonder if they’ve developed a secret code based on the types and quantities of donuts exchanged (which they have, but no one can decipher it...)

Strawberries are another thing. When Tony’s being especially annoying or he’s started to needlessly ramble, Natasha flings a strawberry at him; it usually bounces off the side of his head and he whips around and glares at her. This baffles the others profusely because (a) strawberry?! (b) where’d she get a strawberry? (c) _what does it mean???_

They randomly toss out phrases that sound like nonsense (but it’s actually Latin) as they pass each other throughout the day; they have perfected silent communication using only their eyebrows; their texts to each other consist entirely of cat gifs; custody of the striped hoodie rotates weekly; “Monaco” means something but no one else gets it; and the list goes on...


	5. Sweet Tooth

Tony’s sweet tooth is no secret, but Natasha’s leaves his in the dust.

Despite his near constant sugar cravings, he’s still very health conscious—he has to be. But she will eat Fruit Loops for every meal if you don’t stop her (it seems strange, given the fact the Red Room didn’t exactly care about cuisine and fed the girls the blandest substances to ever be called “food” but Clint took her in when she was still quite young and he lived off pizza and ice-cream so it’s really no surprise she took to junk food, too...)

She’s very low-key about it, though; Tony only caught onto her when he noticed his super-secret stashes of snacks around the Tower and aboard the Helicarrier were depleting rapidly. His first thought was that Fury had found them and cleared them out until one day, during a debriefing, he saw his half-finished packet of chocolate coated mini pretzels magically appear in Natasha’s hands (and he knew she was completely empty-handed when they entered).

Instead of calling her out on it, he accommodates her by bulking out the stashes so there’s enough for them both, and—as he discerns what she likes and doesn’t like—he hides the snacks she prefers in the spots he knows she pilfers more.

The only downside to her sweet tooth is that, when the team goes out to dinner because—for whatever reason—Natasha won’t order a double serving of dessert, no: she just steals his (after he’s had a bite or two—she’s not a total villain). He’s not even sure how it keeps happening; once, he tried to keep his sight glued to his slice of double chocolate mud cake but it still got away from him; she didn’t even leave a smear of the ice-cream on the side for him.

She makes up for it, though. Whenever Tony’s having a bad day—be it that he’s under a lot of stress or he’s still recovering from a mission or he’s just not coping well—he always finds a pack of the exact brand of cookies he likes tucked away under his desk in the workshop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I didn’t make you crave some dessert after all that, then I have accomplished nothing...


	6. The Music Room

The Red Room used ballet prominently in their training both for its emphasis on discipline and as a cover. It was one of their most insidious tricks because the art itself is beautiful but the purpose they gave it was sinister.

As a child, Natasha didn’t see it as such, nor can she bring herself to as an adult. Ballet was so wonderful to her; they tried to teach the girls not to love anything, but she always loved ballet—the rhythm, the precision, the beauty, the art, the challenge... it was never easy, it was often painful and unforgiving, but it had such a markedly different flavour to the rest of the training that she couldn’t help forming a fondness for it.

Through the years, she has tried to peel away every last trace of the Red Room, tried to scrub out all the marks they left on her and tried to pry off all the pieces they melded onto her, but ballet is the one thing she purposely keeps.

She doesn’t get to dance daily or nearly as often as she would like but that doesn’t make her rusty at all; as a SHIELD agent, she physically trains every day and her agility and flexibility are her strengths so she easily maintains the body of a ballerina. SHIELD facilities are well equipped but they lack a dance studio so, when she can suppress the urge no longer, she sneaks off to a studio in whatever city she’s currently based in (there’s a reason she chose that particular apartment in New York and why she keeps it—it’s right around the block from a studio, the owner of which kindly lets her use it at any time).

When the Avengers form and base their operations at the Tower, it’s not long before she learns that the cavernous training room can be reconfigured to mimic any terrain which means she can get Jarvis to alter the floor into something appropriate for ballet.

It soon becomes a routine: Every night, after everyone else has headed off to bed, she sets up in the training room. In absolute silence, she warms up, stretches, and goes through the positions as meticulously as if a strict teacher were watching. Then she gives a nod to Jarvis and instrumental music sweeps the silence away as she slips so easily into the intricate dances drilled into her at such a tender age.

She actively guards these late-night sessions, keeping them as her little secret; she’s not ashamed, and she trusts the others not to tease her like immature children, it’s just that ballet is so dear to her that some irrational instinct compels her to keep it to herself for fear it could be taken away.

Tony knows she’s using his high-tech training room as a dance studio. He designed the state-of-the-art arena and he oversees repairs and upgrades to it so he knows about the studio preset she and Jarvis created—he even tweaked and improved it a little without her noticing. He’s seen her dance a few times but he doesn’t make a habit of watching her because he understands without a single word passing between them that this is something almost sacred to her—much like what tinkering on old cars while blasting classic rock is to him.

But when he does steal a few minutes to watch her dance so fluidly and precisely, he’s absolutely mesmerized. He’s seen world-class ballet performances before—his mother adored ballet, she danced herself when she was a young girl but gave it up to focus on piano and other studies instead, but the passion for the art never faded, so she seized every opportunity she could to see performances like _Swan Lake_ or _Sleeping Beauty_ , and she would happily bring Tony along whenever she could. He’s seen masterful performances, but watching Natasha is different; she’s just as precise as those professional dancers, but there’s something in the way she dances that makes her seem, not like a dedicated dancer fixated on perfection, but like a bird set free from a cage she stayed in so quietly and obediently all day long.

She seems content with the training room, but he (better than anyone) knows it lacks that authentic feel. He doesn’t want to let her know that he’s aware of her secret dance sessions, but he can’t stand not to go through with his idea once he has it, so he steels himself and approaches her one day when she’s just curled up on the couch reading a book.

He says he wants to show her something special; he’s not at all surprised when she warily narrows her eyes at him. He insists it’s kosher and, well, she does trust him not to do anything funny, so she concedes. He tells her they have to drive to it and tells her to bring her ballet shoes.

He takes her to Stark Mansion—the house he grew up in which now serves as a base for the Maria Stark Foundation. He guides her on a quick tour that strategically ends in the Music Room—his mother’s favourite part of the house. It’s a large room on the third storey with one wall consisting entirely of large French doors that open out onto a balcony that overlooks the lake, while the opposite wall boasts a panel of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. There are barres and all the necessary equipment, the wooden floor has the most perfect spring to it, there’s an abundance of warm, natural light, and there’s a grand piano off to the side.

Natasha is speechless. She inhales with a slight gasp and just stares with the widest eyes Tony has ever seen her with. She starts walking around the room, the sound of her soft footsteps echoing around them as she runs her fingers along the barre poles. She takes in this magnificent space with absolute wonder written on every inch of her being; it’s like something from her wildest childhood dreams.

Tony wanders over to the piano and absently fiddles with the keys, producing a melody Natasha can’t place but it sounds so delightful. He carries on playing with just one hand, the other staying firmly in his pocket as he explains that he’s had this room maintained like the rest of the place but it hasn’t seen any use since his mother died; as part of her charity work, she helped local ballet schools to form special classes for kids whose parents couldn’t afford lessons, kids who would otherwise just roam the streets and get into trouble, and even classes for disabled children. She would help them organize the classes and she let them use the Music Room for free—she’d even play the piano for them whenever they couldn’t get someone.

His mother adored this room, he tells Natasha. So many times—day or night—he remembers finding her here just putting on recitals for an empty room.

Tony gives Natasha a key and assures her she’s welcome to come at any time, on any day and just dance—she won’t be disturbed.

She doesn’t use the Music Room often, but she views the times when she can as special. And the rare occasions she manages to get there right when Tony’s playing the piano like Mozart reincarnated... well, those are just absolutely precious...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do also headcanon that Tony had dance lessons as a kid, just didn’t manage to work it into this... (I like to think he enjoys making music more than dancing to it).


	7. The Workshop

Natasha takes to quietly curling up on one of the old couches in the workshop, watching Tony work as she reads a book or deals with mission reports and paperwork.

He didn’t register her presence for nearly a week until one of the bots made two smoothies—he thought it was a malfunction until he saw the bot ambling over to take the second drink to his unobtrusive guest. It was a surprise, but he didn’t say anything—no snarky quip about spies and old habits; he just let her be because she looked so content curled up there.

The next time she ventured into the workshop, there were new, comfier pillows on the couch and a new, rather artistic floor-lamp crafted from what appears to be scrap leftover from armour repairs.

It’s quite comforting having her there, even though they don’t usually talk. After a while, he takes to waving her over and getting her to help him with repairs to the suit. She even comes up with a few additions to his armour that he has to admit are genius. The greatest mark of honour is when he asks her to choose the colour scheme for his newest suit (black, red, and silver, of course).

The bots adore her, especially DUM-E, the eldest and most loyal to Tony. Jarvis, too, takes a liking to her as this is one of the few healthy relationships Sir has ever had. (And she’s clever. Jarvis loves a deep, philosophical conversation with a bright mind like her.)


	8. The Crazy Clothes Competition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short, fun one but definitely one of my favourites...

Tony and Natasha have an unofficial competition going for “Who can subtly wear the most ridiculous T-shirt/pants/jacket/socks/shoes/hat/accessory in public?”

Tony is in the lead with the kitten shirt worn on a morning TV breakfast interview. (He had to sneak the shirt past the make-up department which wanted him to look “suave but casual” so he kept his jacket zipped up until he was on the couch and they were live and no one could stop him).

Natasha doesn’t really do interviews and such, but when they go on undercover dates, she always wears Avengers merchandise shirts. (Her favourites are the off-brand joke ones like the Llama Avengers, Cat Avengers, Wizard of Oz Avengers, etc...)


	9. Long-Distance Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I say this about every other headcanon, but this really is one of my absolute favourites...

It’s no secret Tony is an insomniac.

Sleeplessness is his oldest companion—it’s been with him long before the cave, before his experiences turned into bountiful material for nightmares. He’s a genius with a brain that doesn’t know how to switch off; there’s constant noise in his head and, when he goes to bed, he has nothing to channel it into so it just builds and builds and builds until it’s all just a cacophony of complex plans and ideas that start crashing into each other and losing sense.

Hanging out in the kitchen with Natasha until midnight, however, helps.

Their conversations are never anything fantastic, in fact they often start off as inane banter. Sometimes he tells her his ideas for new gadgets and gizmos—she’s not an engineering genius but she is pretty clever and he likes explaining things to her because it helps him detect flaws in his designs. When they do eventually spill into more serious, personal subjects, it’s never scary. He’s shared his darkest fears with her, and she didn’t bat an eyelash, didn’t tell him he was silly—she just let him talk. And when she lets him in on her dreadful secrets with absolute trust and honesty in her voice, he feels so much less alone. Because they both did horrible things when they were who they used to be... and there are very few people who can stand to even look at them once they know.

The late-night hangouts become an unofficial routine that secretly become the highlight of Tony’s day. But they’re still heroes first and she still has SHIELD duties to attend to, which means she still has missions that take her around the world for weeks at a time.

He finds he absolutely cannot sleep when she’s away.

She eventually learns of this (Steve may or may not have told her). She convinces herself it’s only because he needs the late night chats to unwind, not that he’s attached to her or anything, no, of course not—he just needs someone to talk to. So, for the sake of his health (which she has always been concerned about), she takes to calling him every night before he should go to bed (she does not care about the time difference—she will call him when it’s 9 pm his time no matter what).

When he answers the call, there’s an almost childlike tone of giddiness in his voice and it melts her heart every single time. She assures him she’s fine, promises to come home in one piece, and suggests he take care of himself because she wants to come back and find him in one piece, too. They talk about anything and everything for ages and she laughs so hard when he sheepishly admits he once again initiated a prank war with Johnson, Hill, Wilson, and Barton because he was bored.

She listens as his voice grows heavier and heavier until he’s just humming responses instead of forming actual words. They never run out of things to say but Tony’s been going non-stop for so long that he’s finally crashing. She doesn’t want to let him go but sending him off to a good sleep was the point of calling him. She says goodnight and she knows he’s off to bed as soon as they hang up because he doesn’t try to stoke the conversation.

Sometimes, if he’s really sleepy, he’ll slip and tell her he misses her. If she thinks he’s sleepy enough, she’ll slip and tell him she loves him.

Before she pockets her phone, she pauses and smiles at the picture of her favourite genius smiling back at her.

She herself always sleeps better after these calls...


	10. Oceans & Forests I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony reminds Natasha of the ocean. Deep and dark and wild and warm and cold and full of hidden currents and beautiful. When he looks at her, she can see hurricanes on the horizon.

Natasha was sixteen years old the first time she saw the ocean.

She thought she knew what oceans and seas and beaches and shorelines were. She’d been told the planet was 70 percent water. She knew how to swim. She knew how to row. She knew how to tell when a frozen lake was safe to cross, how to hold her breath for well over a minute, how to dive, how to fish. She knew rivers and lakes and ponds and creeks and streams and that horrible pool tucked away in the bowels of the Red Room.

But she didn’t know oceans.

No one told her how beautiful they were, that they were rarely ever just blue, that sunsets and sunrises and storms and sunshine and starlight altered their colours and textures a thousand different ways, turning their surfaces into artworks you not only saw but felt and heard and breathed.

No one told her how powerful they were, that when you stood on a cliff overhanging dark, roiling waters, you would feel so afraid and yet at peace, so inexplicably yet irrevocably pulled to it, as if you could just fall right in and it would accept you, welcome you, embrace you.

The first time she saw the ocean, she felt released. There were hundreds of factors that pushed her to want freedom, but being in the presence of the ocean connected all the reasons and set her determination in stone.

When she was not yet twenty, not yet a woman, she rejected the only world she knew. She fled the Red Room and, to make sure they understood just how much she hated them, she sought out their enemies and joined their ranks with a vengeance and a mission to turn the tide.

Working with SHIELD, she saw the world. Clint taught her to take photographs just for herself. Coulson got her into the habit of picking up souvenirs for no reason other than to remember. Fury once gave her a postcard and she decided to collect them after that.

She touched every ocean, even nearly drowned in some of them. Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, Southern, Arctic; she loved them too much to ever hate them, no matter what happened... but she couldn’t pick a favourite, either.

A mission went wrong and she ended up injured somewhat worse than usual. Fury knew better than to bench her while she healed so he gave her a deceptively simple task: keep an eye on an ill Tony Stark.

She thought it would be easy. She knew how people worked, she knew how to get close to anyone, how to read them, how to deceive them, how to manipulate information or action from them.

But she didn’t know Tony Stark.

At first, everything seemed to follow the picture she had in mind: he took her at face value and let her in. He looked and acted and spoke exactly as the reports and classified files dictated he should; honestly, Natasha felt like an Olympic swimmer restricted to a kiddie pool.

A faint sense of boredom threatened mere moments before she found herself thrown in the deep end.

It turned out his smooth surface hid tremedous depths no report or file or news clipping ever so much as mentioned.

Tired and scared and alone, he discarded his mask for a mere instant. He looked her in the eyes and asked her what she would do if this were her last day. And, just like that, she was sixteen again, standing on that cliff, watching the waves crash against jagged rocks, her heart pounding with fear and fascination.

Within just a week, her cover was blown. He saved the day and himself; the world would never know the victory was half hers but that was hardly new. They went their separate ways without a goodbye; Natasha knew not to linger on shorelines—oceans had a way of convincing you to stay awhile.

On her drive back, she stopped to pick up a Malibu postcard—a souvenir of one of the wildest weeks she’d ever experienced.

Not too long after that, the world needed saving and the Avengers came together to answer the call. Life pulled them in different directions afterwards but they found themselves returning to each other; like rivers splitting off, going their own way, but always tracing back to the sea.

One of their missions took them to Australia. They made quick work of the AIM base that thought no one would bother to notice odd-goings-on in an abandoned mining town in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Clint begged them to stay a little longer after the clean-up because he was dying for an “Aussie Burger with the lot.” Also, it was nice and warm and sunny while New York was covered in snow, and when did they ever just do something for fun anyway?

Tony needed to decompress; Natasha asked him to take her for a drive.

After a few hours, they reached a quiet coastal town. They slipped their shoes off, left them under a sun-bleached bench, and meandered on the beach until the crashing waves and the breezy air convinced them the world wasn’t always fast and loud and terrifying.

They talked; idle conversation broken up by bouts of just listening to the soft rush of the sea.

She told him about the first time she saw the ocean; he told her this was the first time he’d set foot on a beach since before Afghanistan.

They found a spot to sit on the sand and watch the sun set; it practically fell out of the sky, dragging light and warmth with it.

Natasha couldn’t find many whole shells but she was just as happy collecting shards; Tony noticed her self-appointed task and joined in. They gathered a handful each and he offered to keep them in his pockets for her.

Afternoon faded to evening; twilight gave way to night. “We should get going soon,” became: “We’ll leave when it gets dark,” until that ship sailed and they settled for: “May as well wait until the frantic text from Steve.”

Tony lay back on the sand and laced his fingers behind his head. He didn’t fall asleep but he let his eyes close, his breathing deep and calm; the arc reactor’s glow seeping through his dark shirt matched the moonlight shining on the water.

Natasha had never seen him so at peace; spending the end of the day on the shore hadn’t brought her nearly as much serenity as seeing his soft, relaxed smile did.

The world liked to say Tony Stark was a raging fire; having seen him fighting to save the world on an almost daily basis, Natasha couldn’t deny it was an apt depiction, but it didn’t fit every piece of him.

Tony was more the ocean. Deep and dark and wild, warm and cold; full of hidden currents and secrets no mortal could ever hope to understand. Mystery and myth and undeniable fact.

Before he drifted off to sleep on the sand, Natasha nudged him in the side and told him they’d best get a move on.

She drove the way back; Tony tried to protest but couldn’t convince her through all the yawning. He fell asleep in the passenger seat before they even reached the freeway.

Natasha didn’t mind; she had the radio for company. She found a classic rock station and left it there. She opened the windows and enjoyed the salt air for as long as she could.

A week later, in amongst life carrying on, a little package wrapped in brown paper appeared outside her bedroom door. The only clue to its sender was a sticky note with a rough sketch of what was probably meant to be a kangaroo but looked more like a deformed rat.

Inside was a glass bottle filled with the broken shells they had collected (and Natasha had forgotten).

She gave it pride of place on her bedside table, right under her lamp and beside her alarm. Whenever the sunlight caught the bottle just right, she could see all the little iridescent flecks of mother-of-pearl and soft-edged shards of sea glass littered amongst matte whites and pinks and oranges and blues.

It was small, but it reminded her of one of the most amazing days she’d ever had... and the most incredible person she’d ever met.

It reminded her of freedom and peace and secrets that weren’t always bad.

It reminded her that she finally had a favourite ocean...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a fic-request from Tumblr. The chapter summary is the original prompt (well, half of it). 
> 
> I think Tony fits the whole ocean aesthetic quite nicely...


End file.
